Login | April 26, 2024
Tour de Farce
PETE GLADDEN
Pete’s World
Published: July 24, 2017
Call me a purist, call me a cynic, heck, call me a Debbie Downer, call me whatever you want when I tell you I just don’t give a damn anymore about the Tour De France.
Haven’t cared about bicycle racing’s premier event for the past seven years.
And despite the fact that it’s cycling’s version of the World Series, where some of the best cardiorespiratory athletes on the planet battle it out for three drama-filled weeks, and, despite the fact that I just love professional cycling, my July days are now TDF-less.
What’s the rub? Doping. Lying. Cheating.
You see I’ve always viewed cycling as a kind of man to mechanism marriage that’s about as pure as it gets, whether as a sport, a hobby or a simple mode of transportation.
It’s just a beautiful activity where human body and machine meld into perfect harmony, quite literally into biomechanical symmetry.
Juxtapose that romantic vision with the way this most heralded event on a bicycle––the TDF––is perceived by most of the non-cycling world as a legacy of scandal.
Unfortunately, the contemporary history of pro cycling and the TDF, from the late 1990s through the first decade of 2000, is a commentary on how clean riders have been the exception rather than the rule.
Lance Armstrong confirmed this assertion when he conceded to Oprah Winfrey that doping was "part of the job.”
Heck, anti-doping scientists have estimated as many as 4 out of 5 riders in cycling’s grand tours - France, Italy and Spain - were cheating back then.
Yet don’t get the idea it was just those 20 years of cheating that’s marred this wonderful event.
I hate to admit it, but even in the “good ole days” of the Tour, like three, four, and five-plus decades ago, controversies still existed, most of which centered around the use of amphetamines, steroids and reinfused blood.
What’s more, tales of riders seeking chemical assistance actually began to make the news in the 1920s, when brothers Francis and Henri Pélissier (the 1923 Tour winner) boasted to a journalist that they used cocaine, chloroform and pills.
All told, that adds up to nearly a 100 years of drug use issues which have haunted the TDF.
Matter of fact, there’s oodles of TDF winners over its 114-year old history who’ve been implicated in doping scandals.
If you’re curious simply go online, where you can easily spend a day’s worth of time reading story after story of these controversies.
I honestly don’t have anywhere near enough space here to go through that amazingly long litany of scandals.
Now realize that back then no technologies existed to catch the cheaters, so past TDF winners live on in perpetuity despite all the scandalous accusations.
But in this day and age, with the advent of complex drug testing protocols, that’s changed the history books. And it’s altered the face of the TDF’s current winner’s list.
Lance Armstrong’s string of seven consecutive Tour victories (1999-2005) is now a big empty space on the winners list.
Imagine if this same empty space appeared in the Boston Marathon’s or the US Open’s winners lists? That would be jaw-dropping.
But that’s just one guy.
How about Floyd Landis getting his 2006 win stripped and Alberto Contador getting his 2010 win stripped?
This adds up to nine years worth of empty space in the Tour’s record book.
Yup, my disillusionment runs deep indeed.
The sport, the activity, the object I fell in love with as a child and the two-wheeled contraption I continue to love as an adult, it’s image has been defamed and tainted for far too many years.
And now, just as the hubbub about doping has ever so slightly begun to subside, we’re presented with the newest indictment against the professional cycling community - the use of micro-motors implanted in bikes.
No, this is not a joke. Sadly it’s reality. Simply check out the 60 Minutes piece on Jan. 29 which discusses this amazingly damning allegation.
Well, I guess amidst all that doom and gloom I still see a bright spot, so I’d like to shout out a big thank you to the TDF and professional cycling…for giving me much more time to ride my bike each and every July.